1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for group collaboration among networked users at distributed locations, and more specifically to systems and methods for the closed-loop derivation and display of real-time collaborative group responses among a group of networked users at distributed locations through collective real-time tapping of mobile computing devices.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Portable computing devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and portable media players have become popular personal devices due to their highly portable nature, their ability to provide accessibility to a large library of stored media files, their interconnectivity with existing computer networks, and their ability to pass information to other portable computing devices and/or to centralized servers through phone networks, wireless networks and/or through local spontaneous networks such as Bluetooth® networks. Many of these devices also provide the ability to store and display media, such as songs, videos, podcasts, ebooks, maps, and other related content and/or programming. Many of these devices are also used as navigation tools, including GPS functionality. Many of these devices are also used as personal communication devices, enabling phone, text, picture, and video communication with other similar portable devices. Many of these devices include touch screens, tilt interfaces, voice recognition, and other modern user input modes. As a result, the general social trend within industrial societies is that every person does now or soon will maintain at least one such multi-purpose electronic device upon their person at most times, especially when out and about.
While such devices allow accessing information and person to person communication, they do not provide any unique tools and infrastructure that specifically enable groups of electronically networked individuals to collectively express their approval or disapproval as a real-time shared experience. In the physical world a crowd can cheer, clap, or boo to express their collective approval or disapproval. In networked environments in which large groups of users are not co-located, the human ability to provide group applause is not possible. One could imagine collecting audio feedback of applause from large groups of users but that is bandwidth intensive. Also, it would be difficult to quantify the relative level of approval contributed by individual users and present it as collective level of approval using audio methods. Hence, there is a substantial need to provide efficient tools and methods by which groups of individuals, each having a portable computing device upon their person, to more easily contribute a personal level of approval or disapproval in real-time synchrony with other users, such that their approval or disapproval is presented as a collective group expression of group approval or group disapproval. Furthermore, there is a need to provide tools and methods that enable groups of users to be informed of the whole group's collective level of approval or disapproval. The present invention, as described herein, addresses these and other deficiencies present in the art.